Friday, 12/22/23
I have a new horse today.

I don’t think of her so much as “my horse” yet , but instead as “my training project.” I’m not even necessarily planning on riding much, if ever. Well put it this way: while she is trained for riding, she has so much ground work to repair that riding seems far enough in the future as to be irrelevant. It’s not getting this horse trained to ride that is the challenge; it’s getting her mind back in gear.

Sprinx offered some dramatic demonstrations, today, of just how difficult she is to manage on the ground. Barging into your space, hiking a hip in your general direction, bracing her neck and pulling for all she’s worth in a direction unrelated to the one you’d like to go; she does it all. Fortunately, despite all this, she seems to have a genuine like of people, and is very personable–looking to say hello once she is, for example, finally into the trailer.

Sprinx was so uninterested in loading that I ended up trailering her and her friend to Sprinx’s new home, then bringing the friend back to where we all started. Sprinx’s sellers are good friends of mine, so it all worked out. With friend in the first section of my 2-horse slant load, Sprinx stepped into the rear section like she’d never considered it a problem in the first place. And fortunately, she does unload, walking backwards off the step-down without too much fuss.

She settled into her new digs relatively quickly (well, as far as I could tell–I had to leave right away to get friend horse back home). By the time I was back to see Sprinx, she had obviously been eating her hay and was continuing to do so. I hung a new hay net for her, and gave her some neck scratchies. I leaned against her shelter doorway and studied her perfect, horsie muzzle. Her large, dark eyes. I know how soft that muzzle is; I’m so excited to have her mind in a place where all of her is soft, relaxed, and ready to get to work.

Welcome, Sprinx! We’ll be keeping it positive from here on out.